Glad to find this forum. I had no idea others were having similar issues with EL. Our story is similar. We started with Earthlink when all they offered was dialup service. I think it was back in 1996 or so. We upgraded to DSL when it became available in our area. I have to say it was rare to have issues with our service until about 2 years ago. Our workhorse Speedstream modem died after 8 years and when we called tech support they said they would send us a new upgraded modem for free since the speedstreams were outdated anyway. I think it was a Uptopia or something similar to that. Shortly after that we started having issues with dropped connections. That modem lasted for several years and then they replaced it with a Zyxel for $20. We still had issues. Most of the time resetting the modem would work but sometimes it would take several hours to come back to life. I called in several times about it but after a while I just quit calling since it always eventually would reconnect. Several times when I called I was told that they would have to lower the connection speed to solve the issue. They did that and it didn't help. We have continued having issues with disconnects and slow speed. This time we have been out of service for 2 days. The first tech I talked to was not the politest person and wanted to send us a new modem for free IF we would sign a 12 month contract, otherwise it would be $80. I explained that I didn't want to sign any contracts, we have never had a contract with them in 13 years so why now? Anyway, I told him I would think about it. I called back the next day and got another tech. He said the issue is with the phone lines and not the modem. So he contacted AT&T and they are supposedly sending someone out to check the lines. Even if they get the disconnect problems fixed I am not happy with the speed and may switch providers. That is a real pain since my husband uses his earthlink email address as his business email and you can't take that with you to another provider. And yes, most of the techs are very hard to understand and I am no slouch at understanding accents. I worked at a major university for years and had interactions with foreign students every day. Anyway thanks for reading my rant.